This invention relates to a dispenser device for use with automatic washing machines. More particularly, this invention is directed to an automatic siphon type dispenser for dispensing liquid into the wash water.
Clothes washing machines of the automatic type include a clothes basket into which the clothes to be washed are placed. In top loading machines, which are the kind having a vertically oriented basket with a hinged, top loading door, the clothes are loosely placed in the basket around a centrally disposed agitator. Typically, the agitator tapers from a base at the bottom of the clothes basket to a generally frustoconical end or projection spaced from the top door when in the closed or horizontal position. A plurality of agitator blades are frequently found on the sides of the agitator for disturbing the wash water and thereby removing dirt and other contaminants from the clothes.
Commonly, these automatic washing machines have control mechanisms for establishing a sequence of washing cycles. The general sequence is washing, extracting by spinning, rinsing and then extracting by spinning again. Of course, complex cycles may be used as warranted.
After the machine is loaded with clothes, and the lid closed, the first cycle of washing begins with the slow filling of the wash basket with water. This filling takes a period of several minutes. Usually, a soap or detergent which may be of granular form is used in the washing operation. The soap or detergent is generally placed in the wash basket over the clothes prior to the closing of the lid and the initiation of the washing cycles. Frequently, however, it is desirable to also add additional additives such as water softeners, fabric softeners, bleach, etc. to the machine. However, these additives should be placed in the machine after the basket has filled with water in order to ensure that the full concentration of such substances is not brought into intimate contact with the clothes.
Without some sort of automatic dispensing mechanism, this would require a monitoring of the machine and then a manual reopening of the lid after the water has filled the basket but before agitation has begun.
Some attempts to solve the problem thus posed of providing a dispenser which will insert a liquid additive to the clothes basket of a washing machine at the time after the washing cycle has started are extant in the prior art. Examples of these are found in U.S. Pat. No. 2,991,911 to Spain; U.S. Pat. No. 2,534,014 to Gayring et al; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,233,794 to Sisler. However, these prior art attempts have certain deficiencies which do not make them completely suitable for solving the problem. One deficiency with some of these prior art devices is that they are rather complex and therefore costly. They further require attachment and some integration into the workings of the washing machine with which they are used, and therefore materially add to cost. These devices typically may not be merely added to an existing washing machine but must be built into the machine at the factory, thus making them virtually inapplicable to the millions of already existing washing machines that have been sold without such automatic dispenser capability.